Maybe We Should Teach More CISG

Ruskin Co. is a manufacturer of dampers and louvers for buildings.  My brother David Snyder (no, not the contracts prof) is manager of their plant in Thailand.  He dropped me an e-mail about a recent transaction of theirs, which sounds like a bad contracts exam problem.

Ruskin-Thailand gets an order to fabricate three hundred special high-temperature switches for an order being built by Ruskin’s plant in Monterey, Mexico.  The heat sensors used in the switches are manufactured by Honeywell.  Ruskin-Thailand places an order for the sensors from Honeywell’s South East Asia Distributor in Singapore.  Honeywell-Singapore transmits the order to Honeywell-U.S.  Honeywell-U.S. imports the sensors from its facility in China.  Honeywell-U.S. then ships the sensors to the distributor, Honeywell-Singapore, which then ships the sensors to Ruskin-Thailand.

Ruskin-Thailand builds the switches and installs the sensors. It then ships the assembled switches to the Ruskin test facility in Kansas City, Missouri.  Ruskin-Kansas City performs the tests, then ships the tested switches to Ruskin-Monterey.  Ruskin-Monterey builds the order and installs the switches, and then ships the completed units to the customer . . . in Beijing.

[Frank Snyder]